Of all the fruits which I have tasted in any part of the world, nothing
has seemed to me preferable to the East Indian Mango. It is about the
length of a full grown cucumber, as large as the largest specimens of
that vegetable, smaller at one end that at the other. It has a flat
stone extending from end to end. The skin is about the thickness of
that of the banana. You stand the mango on one end in your plate and
slice it on either side of the stone. Two slices then lay before you.
With a dessert spoon you take out piece after piece of the tender
fruit, and when you have eaten both halves to the skin, there yet
remains the stone, which has a great deal on it. You take it up in both
hands and pass your mouth around it. By this time your hands and face
are a spectacle which you can judge of by the predicament which you see
your neighbor to be in. You are ready to agree with the East Indian
maxim that a mango never should be eaten except in a tub of water. You
cannot help beginning with another; but let it be small, or you will
be likely to inquire if you may not divide your second with a friend.
The fruit is of about the same color inside as the muskmelon, but it is
harder, though not tough, not disagreeably sweet; juicy, nutritious.
We began to receive them at Hong Kong in May, from Manila, where they
are in perfection. We were surprised on seeing them upon the table at
Christmas in Manila, a forcing process being used there to bring them
forward.
Another valuable fruit in the East Indies is the Mangastene. It is
of the size of the tomato and looks like it in shape; it is of the
deep purple color of the purple grape. The outside shell, which is
easily broken by the hand, being removed, a snow white fruit appears,
divided like the tomato into as many sections. Its juice is slightly
acid,--more correctly, acidulated,--a pleasant sour. There being little
or nothing solid in it, the saying is that one may eat of the fruit
indefinitely. There are few fruits better adapted to a warm climate.
At Shanghai the Watermelon attains a degree of perfection which I have
never known exceeded.
The Pumelo, though a coarse fruit, is valuable. It resembles the West
India shadduck; it is a large, fleshy orange, not so juicy as that
fruit.
To those who are fond of the banana it must be a delight to spend time
where they can fully gratify their taste for it. The Sandwich Islands
gave us the best specimens.--I cannot say it would be easy for me to
enlarge this description of foreign fruits; indeed it would be painful,
for the mention of these fruits is a vivid reminder of lost joys, joys
pure, innocent, health-giving, a source of gratitude to the Giver
of all good, stimulating the anticipation of future pleasure, which
divine revelation does not consider it beneath itself to specify among
the promised pleasures of heaven. It used to be a pleasant theme of
meditation in those East India regions, that in the fields of the blest
there is a species of tree (not, of course, one solitary tree) which
bears twelve manner of fruits, and yields fruit every month. It was a
harmless fancy of an invalid which twelve of all the fruits known to
him he would select for that species of tree to bear. His taste would
make grave mistakes in putting the watermelon, for example, on the same
tree with the plum; which led him to question whether the structural
nature of the tree might not be supposed to be as far beyond his
present botanical knowledge as the yield of the tree would surpass his
present experience. His acquaintance with the almost perpetual banana
gave him some idea of the practicability of vegetation reaching to the
extent, even, of yielding fruit every month; so that without consulting
with the botanical critic he would load his tree with the East Indian
mango, mangastenes, apricots, muskmelons, peaches, pears, grapes,
apples, quinces, watermelons, banana, figs; and then he would consider
how inadequate was a pomological catalogue to express the known objects
which stood ready to tempt his appetite. The queen of Sheba, herself
from the East, perhaps admonished him by seeming to say that a greater
than Solomon would hereafter ‘feed him and lead him to living fountains
of waters.’